


How The Light Gets Out

by anactoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s04e20 The Rapture, Episode: s10e09 The Things We Left Behind, Gen, Piercings, Self-Harm, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 14:38:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3176268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Castiel, Claire becomes her own canvas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How The Light Gets Out

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as always, to [frozen_delight](http://archiveofourown.org/users/frozen_delight/pseuds/frozen_delight) for her beta help. <3
> 
> Please be aware that there's a short but graphic scene of self-harm in this fic.

Afterwards, Claire dreams.

Not about the things that actually happened—about the _thing_ that looked at her out of Dad’s eyes, that whispered to her and spoke through her and felt like a sunstorm inside her head. She sees all of that stuff every time she closes her eyes in class, every time she stares out the window or at the TV for too long and finds herself zoning out. She doesn’t need to be sleeping to remember it.

Her dreams are other things. Sometimes she sees Dad’s face, and its eyes are alight with this cold blue-white, like the headlamps you see on fancy cars. Sometimes, there’s a knife at his throat and it pierces the skin and instead of blood, that same light comes flowing out. Sometimes she hears him talking, only it isn’t Dad’s voice that comes out of his mouth, and the way it hums in her bones feels like the way the light hurts her eyes, somehow.

Angel echoes. That’s what she calls them inside her head. She wonders if maybe they’re happening somewhere, somehow. 

And people say, _Dreams can come true_ , like it’s a good thing, and Claire wants to believe they’re lying but she can’t, not anymore.

 

\----

 

Sometimes, she stands in front of the bathroom mirror and doesn’t look at it for the longest time. She’ll look out the window instead, try to concentrate on a bird or cloud or the swaying leaves of the beech tree outside. Then she’ll whip her head around real quick, try to catch a glimpse of her reflection, of what she looks like when she isn’t being watched. Or she’ll squeeze her eyes tight shut and try to surprise herself by opening them. 

She never sees whatever she’s looking for, though—just her own face, and stars dancing in the corners of her eyes when she opens them.

When Grandma catches her doing it, she shakes her head and says, “Sweetie, you’re too young to worry so much about how you look,” and shoos her outside to play with the other kids.

Claire doesn’t have the words to explain that it isn’t how _she_ looks that she’s worried about.

 

\----

 

She doesn’t even mean to do it, the first time.

It’s November, dank and cold outside, and she’s sitting in the back of class doodling while Ms. Feinberg drones on about the Pilgrims. She runs out of space in her notebook and the back of her hand is just the nearest available surface.

But when they break for recess and she gets out of her chair, she glances down and sees the doodle again—a Mickey Mouse head and a bunch of lopsided hearts, already smeared by the sleeve of her sweater. She isn’t even good at drawing. Still, she thinks, _That’s mine. I did that._

After that, it’s like she can’t stop. She doodles other cartoon characters, sometimes, or random patterns of circles, or rude things about the teachers—the ones who frown and mutter, _Runs in the family_ behind her back. 

Mostly, though, she draws stars.

She couldn’t say why. Just that it’s comforting, somehow, to see them there on the outside of her skin. She looks at them and she thinks, _They’re mine. Not his. Mine._

The back of her hand stops being enough, before long. She starts there, and then she rolls up the sleeve of her sweater and starts on her wrist, works up and back until both arms are covered in stars up to the elbows. The other kids stare and nudge each other when she passes them in the hall, but she looks right ahead and keeps walking. 

Ms. Feinberg takes her aside at the end of the school day, this one time. She fiddles with the hem of her jacket and doesn’t make eye contact while she tells Claire that if she needs to talk about anything, she can always drop by after class, she knows that, right? Claire doesn’t really blame her. Nobody wants to get stuck talking to the crazy kid.

“Nothing’s wrong, okay?” she mutters, when Ms. Feinberg finally stops talking. “It was just a stupid bet.”

After that, she wears long sleeves to school even when it’s meltingly hot outside, pokes thumb-holes in their cuffs and pulls them down over her hands.

It’s enough to ward off the teachers, but of course Grandma notices. She shakes her head and then she drags Claire to the bathroom and hands her a washcloth and crosses her arms. 

“What?” Claire demands. “Jesus, it’s not like I was hurting anybody. I can do what I like with them, they’re _my arms_!”

Grandma’s eyes go very tired, and she doesn’t even tell Claire off for taking the Lord’s name in vain, which means something is definitely up. She sighs.

“Sweetie,” she says, “I know that. But your teachers, the moms and dads at your school—they’re going to look at this kind of thing, and maybe they’ll think—”

“That I’m crazy?” Claire scowls. “You’re scared they’ll find out I’m crazy.”

Grandma’s lips thin. “Maybe they’ll think I can’t take care of you right anymore.”

Claire stares up at her. “Oh,” she says, and she feels small and stupid.

The lines on Grandma’s face are deeper than they used to be. She walks really slow most of the time now, and sometimes she has to stop halfway down the block to catch her breath and it makes this really weird sound when she breathes, like something rattling around inside her chest. And some mornings Claire has to get the bus to school, because Grandma has an appointment with the doctor, and Grandma always says not to worry. 

Claire shouldn’t listen to her about that, she realizes. She already knows grown-ups lie.

She takes a deep breath. Gently, she reaches out and takes the washcloth from Grandma’s hand. “Don’t worry,” she says. “Nobody’s gonna know.”

Grandma smiles faintly and squeezes her hand, but she still looks tired.

 

\----

 

After the funeral, Claire dreams about the angel for the first time in ages.

She dreams about Dad again—or Dad’s face, anyway. About the blade cutting his throat and the light bleeding out.

Only this time the light expands, like a nuclear bomb in a movie, and it swallows up Mom and Grandma along with Dad and when it fades away all that’s left of them are their shadows scorched onto the ground. 

Claire runs and runs, but when she looks down at her hands the light is seeping out from under her fingernails.

 

\----

 

Adults with pitying expressions and files full of notes come to the house and talk over her head about institutions and foster care. They ask her questions she doesn’t answer. 

Instead, she sits at Grandma’s desk and picks a pencil sharpener out of the pile of stationery. Delicately, she pokes the tip of her pinky finger into the hole. She imagines just jamming it right in there and turning it, slicing the skin off in a perfect curl like orange peel.

She doesn’t, but she slips the pencil sharpener into her pocket.

And later, when they take her away from Grandma’s house and deposit her in the home of an earnest-eyed couple who insist that she call them _Poppy_ and _Dan_ , not _Mr. and Mrs. Goldman_ , Claire still has it with her.

Their house smells of lavender. There’s a poster on the bedroom wall, some boyband with California grins and stupid hair. The comforter is pastel pink.

Claire finds a pair of nail scissors in the bathroom cabinet and uses them to dissect the pencil sharpener. 

Later that night, when the light in her head won’t let her sleep, she takes the blade between thumb and forefinger and digs a corner of it into the meat of her thigh. A thin line of blood comes welling out. She feels dizzy with triumph.

She’s still feeling it three weeks later, after she’s ruined every spare set of sheets _Poppy and Dan_ own, and they throw their hands up and say they just can’t help her. She sits in the back of the car that’s going to drop her off at some faceless institution, and she knows it’s gonna suck, but still she can’t keep from running her fingers over the scabs on her forearms and thinking, _They’re mine._

 

\----

 

“I used to do that shit too, you know.”

“Yeah?” Claire snorts and doesn’t look at the boy sitting down beside her. “You here to tell me I deserve better than that, too?”

“Huh? No. No, I mean, I don’t even know you.” The boy hesitates. “But I ain’t screwing with you. I’ve been there.” 

He pushes up his sleeve, then, and despite herself, Claire turns to look. 

Sure enough, there they are. Raised white knots of scar tissue on his skinny arms, like measles in negative. He has this douchey tribal tattoo winding its way around his bicep, too. All Claire knows about tattoos is Grandma thought they were trashy, but even she can tell it’s a crappy one. Looks like he did it himself with a Sharpie. Maybe while drunk.

“Gross,” she says.

“Burned myself with cigarettes,” he tells her, and he only sounds a little bit proud of himself. “Thing is, it makes them look at you. Cutting, burning, all that crap. They’ll watch everything you do. And you don’t want that, seriously.”

Claire shrugs. She could try to explain to him that it isn’t about being seen, but it _is_ about being able to see herself. He wouldn’t get it.

He points to his tattoo, then. “Which is why this is the way to go,” he tells her. “All the rush, none of the socially unacceptable. They don’t like it, but at least they think it’s just a fashion thing.”

Claire looks at him. “Where’d you get it done?” she asks. “Just so I know never to go there.”

“Hey!” he says, but then he grins and holds out his hand. “Dustin,” he says.

Claire doesn’t shake his hand.

She can’t shake his idea, either, though, and when she decides she’s gonna get her ears pierced just to see if there’s something in it, he comes with her, grinning like they’re going on some awesome adventure. At least he doesn’t try to hold her hand while she sits in the chair.

The holes are small and neat. 

Claire feels a little disappointed. She was kind of expecting blood.

Still, she can’t keep from touching the little silver studs in her ears when it’s done. Looking at her reflection in store windows as they walk past. They’re hard and bright; like wearing stars on the outside.

 

\----

 

"You gotta start small with tats,” Dustin tells her. “Hurts like a bitch, and trust me, you don’t wanna end up with a half-finished backpiece because you didn’t have the stones to come back after the first session.” 

He’s talking with that kind of know-everything tone boys put on when they want to impress you, and most of the time it means they know almost as little as you do.

Claire looks at the photographs on the wall—women with snakes curling gracefully over their shoulders, koi carp swimming up their spines, flowers drawn in minute detail, skulls and occult symbols and quotes from arthouse films—and she thinks, you’d have to really know who you were, to put something so _big_ on you, to be sure you weren’t gonna get sick of it in a couple years.

She’d like to be that sure.

But, “A thousand bucks?” she bursts out, when she catches sight of the prices. 

That’s more money than she’s ever even held in her hands. She gazes up at the big beautiful pictures, her heart sinking.

Dustin sniffs. “This place is high-end. Been in magazines and shit. I don’t see why you won’t just come to Marty’s.”

Claire scowls at him. “So I can look like a third-grade art project? No thanks.” 

She looks back in the window. There’s some freaky-looking goth guy in the chair, getting a circle of barbed wire inked around his wrist, jaw set, the way people look when they don’t want to show that they’re in pain. 

“Check out that emo shit,” Dustin says, behind her. “Bet he cries when he jacks off.”

Claire elbows him. She gets it, kind of. Putting your chains on the outside, so you don’t have to carry them around inside your head anymore. 

“Let’s go,” she says, sighing. “I’m never gonna be able to afford this. Even something that small.”

At that, Dustin’s face brightens. “Actually,” he says, and there’s the know-it-all voice again, “there’s totally a way you can get the money.” 

She looks at his reflection in the window. Pictures dance behind it. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He grins. “Come on, I’ll show you. It’s gonna be awesome.”

 

\----

 

She gets stars, in the end; a little trail of them down her wrist. They’re one of the smallest pieces on offer, which is all she can afford right now. She’s better at shoplifting than Dustin, but she still has to be careful, not swipe enough stuff to get noticed. It’s a pain in the ass.

“You got ID?” the guy in the tattoo parlor asks her, when she drops her crumpled handful of bills on the counter. 

Claire has an excuse on the tip of her tongue, disappointment already creeping up from her gut, when a voice from across the shop says, “It’s cool, I know her. She’s a friend of Janey’s.”

The guy raises an eyebrow. “She is?”

“Yeah,” Claire jumps in, nodding emphatically. “Best friends.”

The guy shrugs and turns away with a _your funeral_ look on his face, and Claire turns to check out her savior.

She’s a young woman with dyed-red hair and great big holes stretched in her earlobes, a tapestry like stained glass inked up one arm, animal skeletons like something from a museum parading down the other. She casts a glance at the guy’s retreating back, then winks at Claire.

“You don’t know me,” Claire says, frowning at her. “Why’d you help?”

The woman shrugs. “I've seen you in here before. You kind of reminded me of young me, I guess. I knew exactly what I wanted, and I couldn’t understand why I had to wait. And then the magic birthday came, and hey, I still wanted exactly the same thing. It’s about maturity, not age.”

Sounds like some kind of bullshit, to Claire. This woman doesn’t know her, and she’s pretty sure she’s never been called _mature_ before. 

Still, she’s not gonna argue. She looks the woman in the eyes. “Exactly.”

“So,” the woman goes on. “You know what you want?”

Claire looks at the stars on the wall. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I know.”

The stars come out good: sharp lines, solid coloring. Dustin is gonna be way jealous.

Claire can’t stop looking at them, later. Every couple minutes, she finds herself tugging up the edge of the dressing to take a peek. Black stars; stars in negative; the opposite of the light inside her head. Hers.

 

\----

 

The morning before she gets caught stealing and everything goes to shit, she braids her hair the way Mom showed her when she was little.

She doesn’t even realize she’s doing it, at first. It’s just a muscle memory, automatic, and when she’s done she looks in the mirror and it kind of startles her. 

_Looks dumb_ , she tells herself, and won’t let herself think anything else about it. 

It’s too young for her, too innocent for her black stars and her new nose-ring and her leather jacket and her scars and her memories. She scowls at her reflection and scrawls on thick black wings of eyeliner in retaliation, smudges them with her fingers until she looks like a bad kid again.

Maybe that’s what gets her caught, dragged back in disgrace with no cash in her pocket and a sinking sense of failure, Randy’s voice echoing in her ears and his disappointed face in her mind’s eye. She couldn’t even do this right. She’s no more use than when she _was_ a little kid and she said _yes_ to the angel because she didn’t know any better and she couldn’t save—

She doesn’t let herself get any further. She sits in the little holding room they put her in and pummels at the punching bag they put in there to calm down the crazies, and wishes it would turn her knuckles bloody.

Morning comes. The door opens, and she has a visitor.

 

\----

 

And less than two days later, she’s shaking in the backseat of the Winchesters’ stupid muscle car outside the house where Randy and Salinger and his mooks are lying dead. Her hands are fisted in the fabric of Castiel’s trenchcoat—because right now he’s the closest thing she has left to family, and _that’s_ so screwed up she doesn’t even try to process it, just huddles into his side and holds on.

She tries to tell her hands to let go. She tries to tell them to stop trembling. 

They refuse to obey her. 

She looks at them, distantly, and feels like they belong to someone else.


End file.
